Iranian-born Reza Aslan, a noted apologist for radical Islam, recently spoke at UC Riverside on the topic of Islamophobia. In answer to my question during the q and a, he said that just because someone was badly treated by a Muslim is no excuse for being bigoted against Muslims. My question was whether he would dismiss Christians in Iraq and Syria as Islamophobes.

Also note the thinly-disguised anti-Semitic language of Hatem Bazian in the above article. This is a guy who reportedly told a college audience to count the number of buildings on campus with Jewish names on them. When he spoke at UC Irvine in 2010, I tried to pin him down on that as well as other reported comments, but what I got was a run around. A real credit to UC Berkeley.

Then there is Juan Cole, also the editor of the misnamed blog, Informed Comment. Last year, I saw him speak at Cal. State Long Beach, where he called British Prime Minister David Cameron a racist for telling the British public that some 400 British Muslims had left to join ISIS, a "minuscule" number according to Cole.

Given the history of these three characters, One might really wonder how much they oppose the Ayatollahs of the Iranian government-if at all.

1 comment:

My question was whether he would dismiss Christians in Iraq and Syria as Islamophobes.

Answering for myself, since I have not been appointed as Reza Aslan's spokeshole, and wouldn't take the job if it was offered, the answer would very with each individual Christian, and would depend on whether any particular one blamed Islam, or ISIS, for what happened to them.

Would I dismiss white people in the USA as racists? To say no, none of them, would be a lie, and to say yes, all of them, would also be a lie.

The Iran deal is par for the course in diplomacy. If we had the power to just take what we want and enforce it, whether anyone else likes it or not, we would do that. We don't have the financial resources, manpower, or will, to go to war with Iran, and we can't enforce what the jabberwockies in congress are jabbering about without being prepared to invade Iran. Ergo, we got a good deal, by using what we could do sufficiently well the it hurt Iran enough that we were able to get a modicum of what we desired.

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Roger Gardner of Radarsite (1936-2009)

About Me

Born 1945 in Los Angeles. Worked from 1998-2016 as adjunct teacher at University of California at Irvine Ext. teaching English as a second language.
Served three years in US Army Military Police at Erlangen, Germany 1966-68.
1970-1973- Criminal Investigator with US Customs
1973-1995 Criminal investigator with Drug Enforcement Administration. Stationed in Los Angeles, Bangkok, Milan, Italy, Pittsburgh and Office of Training, FBI Academy, Quantico, Va. until retirement.
Author of Erlangen-An American's History of a German Town-University Press of America 2005,
The Story of Papiamentu- A Study in Slavery and Language, University Press of America, 2002, and
The Languages of the Former Soviet Republics-Their History and Development, University Press of America, 2000.